sewing, fabric, quilts

Mixed Up Maze Quilt

I’ve had such a great time making this quilt, from the fabric selection to the extensive grid quilting. This quilt came about by me experimenting with cutting up strip sets of solid colors. I played around with a few colors and in the end, decided that just two colors of high contrast had the most impact.

I took all the blocks and arranged them so that they looked like they were in some pattern, but they actually weren’t. This was enormously fun. Really. I had such a great time rearranging the blocks into all kinds of designs. My youngest son, home on college break, walked by and said, “That looks like a maze”. Hence the name.

For the backing, I used a great fabric I’ve had in my stash for a while, patiently awaiting the right quilt. And this was it. The fabric is Color Names in White, purchased from Pink Castle Fabrics. It complements the modern, graphic look of this quilt. This is an excellent backing fabric, because it is a 108″ wide fabric, with no need to piece the back. Yay. Piecing backs is the only part of quilting that I don’t enjoy.

I quilted this in an all over 1″ quilting grid, which took lots of time and focus, but was lots of fun. It was addictive to see the texture developing, as more and more lines got quilted. The quilt has a wonderful feel and drape to it, because of the quilting.

The thread I used on top for the quilting was Aurifil #2902 in Laurel Green. It’s a 100% cotton thread from Italy and is wonderful. It hardly produces any lint at all, even with extensive quilting. I used the 50wt. I put a light color in the bobbin, however, to match the backing fabric. To sew the grid, I just used my seam guide and attached it to my walking foot.

For the binding, I tried out a few different fabrics and ended up using Sandhill Charcoal from M&S Textiles Australia. I had to laugh because, coincidentally it was the same fabric in a different colorway that I used for the backing for my English China Quilt, a recent finish. It’s a really neat fabric and I loved the effect as a binding. When I sewed the binding on, I used the Laurel Green Aurifil thread in the top and black thread in the bobbin, to match the binding.

This quilt finishes at 54″ x 60″, a really nice size for a throw quilt. I love the bold modern graphic feel of this quilt. I think it would make a great design element in a room.

I can’t open this Elaine so can’t see the images. Not sure why. I tried several times.

On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 5:45 AM, Beech Tree Lane Handmade wrote:

> Beech Tree Lane Handmade posted: ” I’ve had such a great time making this > quilt, from the fabric selection to the extensive grid quilting. This quilt > came about by me experimenting with cutting up strip sets of solid colors. > I played around with a few colors and in the end, decided that ” >